Plainview BioEnergy close to delivering first unit train of ethanol

Published 6:00 pm, Sunday, November 1, 2009

According to Chuck Fryar, general manager of the facility located east of Plainview, the plant began grinding corn Oct. 12 and making ethanol and distillers grains Oct. 16.

Plainview BioEnergy shut down in January, only a few months after it began production, because of what Fryar described at the time as "poor ethanol profit margins."

The 100 million-gallon plant was built by Dallas-based White Energy and began operations in April 2008.

However, 13 months later White Energy and its subsidiaries in Plainview, Hereford and Russell, Kan., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

When the local facility ceased production in January, Fryar emphasized that the shutdown would only be temporary. In fact, the local plant kept its staff on payroll in anticipation of firing back up in the future.

Despite losing a few employees over the past several months, Fryar said prior to reopening that he had been able to fill those vacancies and the new employees were going through training.

On Friday, Fryar said he is pleased with how well things have run over the past few weeks.

"Everything has run exceptionally well," he said.

Since restarting the plant, Fryar said it had been able to run on locally-produced corn. While it still is bringing in local grain, the plant received its first trainload of non-local corn Friday morning.

With its restart, the manager said, the plant intends to blend milo and corn — beginning with a blend of approximately 10 percent milo. Fryar said he would like to get up to a 30 percent blend if the local milo crop will support that.

"Actually, there is no difference in cooking it," he said of the blend versus straight corn.

He said his crew mixes it together and grinds it and cooks it at the same time.

The blend allows the facility to buy whatever is the most affordable commodity at the time.

Fryar said the plant has been sending out truckloads of ethanol but is moving toward the next level of production.

"The next part of the process," he said, "is to ship a unit train of ethanol on Nov. 6. That’s 2.7 million gallons. We’ve got 56 cars loaded and we’ve got to get 90."